Free Distributors?

[ghettosynth]

I'm going to put some of my music on Spotify. I could give two shits who streams it, I just want to include my own music in my playlists. So, I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to me to pay $20 a year for distribution, or to use the free services. I'm more concerned about convenience than any other factor. I won't put any effort into promotion and I don't care at all about any targets other than Spotify and Apple Music. I do want to be able to change my mind and have music taken down.

What's your experience?

[ghettosynth]

How rare, nobody on KVR has an opinion about music and money?

[seafire]

If its something you do frequently, $20 a year isn't much.

I keep some stuff on my phone and Spotify plays it OK from there, but depends how you stream I guess.

[ghettosynth]

So, routenote, it seems will take forever to process the one track that I uploaded to test it out. I'm thinking that it's probably less hassle to just pay for one of the services.

Tunecore: base subscription at $20/year will allow you to set your release date.
Distrokid: base subscription at $20/year will not allow you to set your release date.

I'm probably going to just go for Tunecore and in the very likely even that routenote doesn't approve my upload, LOL, there are very good reasons not to, I'll just delete the submission and re-upload to Tunecore. For one, I only want my music on Spotify, so I doubt that it's a good investment for them. I suspect that they will say that it's generic and reject it.

From what I've read, routenote is one of the best of the free services, but it seems that all of the free services are flooded with submissions. Hence, if you want to reduce hassle, it's probably worth a pizza a year. Tunecore is slower than distrokid, but you have to spend double on distrokid to specify the release date. Most of the other features I don't care about.

[ghettosynth]

If its something you do frequently, $20 a year isn't much.

I keep some stuff on my phone and Spotify plays it OK from there, but depends how you stream I guess.

I stream across multiple devices, but in particular, my Xbox. I suppose I could setup a media server and point the Xbox to that, sounds like a wasted afternoon at minimum if I can't find a good solution. In any case, I was too flippant by half, my friends do sometimes want to hear my work, and I don't want to force them to use Bandcamp.

[FranklyFlawless]

What's your experience?

Locally playing audio files.

[harryupbabble]

i don't really want to free distributors
i do kinda sorta want to free willy
or bill or liam

i changed my mind
i don't want to free those guys
are they even in jail?

and plus, i'm not even bob dylan
boy, i wish i was

[ghettosynth]

For those that may be interested in the process with free services, routenote approved my release. It took about two weeks to get that email, they say another one to two weeks before it's on Spotify. Keep in mind that if they were going to choose to filter someone because of unsellable content, my release would certainly qualify. I'm fairly certain that it's already cost them more money than they will ever make from all of my "music" combined, even if the analysis of the track was completely automated.

I still think that I'll go with a different distributor going forward. I have some mild feelings of guilt for using a free service without really having intent to make any money, however, it's pretty clear that they're overwhelmed and that's just going to make them slow.

I have heard that tracks go from approved to disapproved, so I'll report back if that happens.